Mute
by Tare-Bear
Summary: After witnessing her parent's murder at the age of five, Katniss Everdeen has endured one hospital after another. A psychological mute, prone to delusions, she does not make the best patient, and finds herself dumped where ever there's room: Panem's Mental Institution, where she meets enthralling new peers. Especially the blonde boy in room twelve, with the burn scars. Modern AU.
1. Prologue

A/N: Someone tell me to stop doing this. I need to stop making new fics. Blargh. Anywho, here's this one. Enjoy. There's more to come. Peeta, too. -Taryn

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Prologue

The footsteps rang in my ears.

The angry shouting and the high pitched screams weren't that bad. They were only background noise. It was that clambering _thud, thud, thud_ of feet as they flew down the stairs which clung to my memory like early spring mud sucks at the soles of your rain boots.

_Thud, thud, thud_, came the sound, from the front porch.

I heard the roar of a car. Tires racing across gravel: _crunch, crunch, crunch._

There was the eerie squeal of the rusted front-gate that circles our house as it opened, causing me to clutch my knees tighter to my chest. He was leaving. _Thud, thud, thud. _He forgot to check the closet. _Crunch, crunch, crunch. _He left.

He was never here.

For a long time I stayed curled up in my ball. I was sitting on daddy's favorite shoes. They weren't all that comfortable, though he told me once that was why they were his favorite. I shifted, reached underneath myself and wiggled the slipper free. It was soft, furry and white. I clutched it to my chest, fingers threading through the strands of silky fur until I counted to a hundred.

Just to be sure I counted to _two_ hundred. That way I would give mommy enough time to set out my bedtime snack. Cookies and milk. Oreos were my favorite, but we ran out yesterday. Daddy was supposed to get more from the store. Oh, I hoped he did.

Once I reached three hundred, I knew it was time. I stalled. I put the shoe back in its place, next to the other one, then straightened them, more than once, until they were perfect, and I moved them around so they were on the right sides. This way daddy would be able to just kick his feet into them and be done with it. I smiled, crept away from the door and peered down the stairs.

_Thud, thud, thud._

I sunk slowly onto the top step, hand clutching the rail. I counted to four hundred. I had heard something break before and I figured it would take a little while to clean up the mess. It was probably mommy. She was always clumsy, and she dropped things. Like her coffee. One time she knocked a vase of flowers off the table, that'd daddy had picked for her.

I cocked my head, waiting for the sound of the vacuum.

It never came. Daddy must have swept it up for her.

I waited for mommy to call me for snack.

I got all the way to five-hundred fifty-two, before I reminded myself that I wasn't supposed to have snack tonight. Last week mommy's friend came to visit and I got in trouble for pushing over her son, Gale, when he tried to steal my colored pencils. They _were_ mine, to be fair. I sulked all the way to my room about the _un_fairness of my punishment, then slipped into the covers and curled into a ball.

The next morning I found mommy sleeping on the kitchen floor. I told her to get up, but she wouldn't listen, so I made breakfast myself. I climbed onto the counter, got a bowl all by myself and then poured myself the chocolate cereal. Then I thought, I should make mommy some breakfast, too. She must be really tired if she was sleeping on the floor, and that means she'd be really hungry when she woke up. I got out a second bowl and tried my best not to spill the milk. I did. A little. I got out a towel and threw it over the mess.

When I was done making the meal, I placed the bowl next to mommy's face. I rolled my eyes at her silliness. Who sleeps on their stomach, with their nose mushed into the rug? Oh, mommy.

I ate all my breakfast, sitting crisscrossed on the floor next to her. Then I skirted around the inky puddle of cherry juice on the ground and put the bowl in the sink. What a mess. I picked up the towel I had used to clean up the milk and dropped it over the cherry juice. It must have been mommy's juice that dropped last night, not her coffee. I looked around for the broken cup, then figured she must be laying on it.

I left mommy to nap.

Daddy was sleeping outside, and he left the front door wide open, too.

"You're going to let all the heat out," I told him severely, remembering he used to scold me the same and I closed it. Then I felt bad. He was out there without a coat and it was snowing. I ran up to the closet and found his furry slippers and streaked back down the halls. They would be a good apology.

Maybe he'd go get me my cookies.

But even after I had slid the slippers onto his pale feet, he didn't hear me asking him to take me to the store. I touched his arm. I even tickled his sides. I punched his leg. Daddy continued to sleep.

Oh, daddy, you work too hard.

I'd never woken up before both my parent before. I missed him, suddenly, a lot, and I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him. He was so cold. His lips were blue and the wind outside was vicious. Alaska had such harsh winters, mommy used to complain. Daddy would always say that he loved the snow, he grew up in this house. "Katniss should, too," he would add, patting my head.

I found his hand and pulled at it, but it was too heavy. I wiggled lower, until I could rest my head against his palm and I closed my eyes. But it was so cold outside. Flurries of white specks rained on us, even though the front porch had a covering. It was the wind. Unforgiving and strong enough to lash skin.

I snuggled closer to daddy, thinking he would warm me up.

He didn't.

"Dad," I said. "Dad, please get up."

I sat up, gripped his big hands and shook them. "Dad. Mommy made a mess in the kitchen."

"Dad. I don't feel good. My tummy hurts."

"Dad. Dad. Dad."

I reached for his face and felt his cheek. It was gray. That was a funny color. "Are you wearing makeup?" I asked, wrinkling my nose. "Daddy.."

I brought him my favorite blanket and tucked him in just like he would for me. I could be the care-taker. I used to have a doll; I was not unfamiliar with the concept of playing mommy. Pallid flesh felt icy underneath my small fingers. The wooden porch wasn't the best place to nap; I told him that, and daddy didn't seem to care. I brought him a pillow from the couch–the blue one, not the red, since I knew he hated red–I tried to slide it underneath his head, but when my hand slipped underneath his black curls, it felt sticky and wet.

My fingers came away red.

"You slipped," I said. Then I said it again, multiple times, until I fled to the bathroom, to wash my hands. You shouldn't touch other people's blood, I knew. They could get you sick. I washed them once, then again – the stuff caked easily around my nails and I grew panicked. After the third time I calmed myself. It was only a bump. I'd bumped my head before. Daddy was bigger and stronger, he'd be fine. So I clawed my way into the medicine cabinet, despite how vehemently mommy told me never to touch. Inside, there were a box of scooby-doo band-aids – my favorite. It took the whole batch to patch him up.

I was hungry afterward, and I found a box of goldfish to eat. But when I walked through the kitchen, I forgot about the bowl of cereal next to mom and I tripped it. Soggy, white, the liquid spread, squishy between my toes. Milk and juice soaked into mommy's shirt and I brought her the bath rode off the bathroom door, because I couldn't really remember where she kept her shirts. For my sticky toes I found some socks. That helped a little.

For dinner I ate three popsicles from the freezer. I asked mommy and she didn't answer, so I thought it'd be alright, but just in case I was wrong I brought one to daddy. He used to steal us a bowl of ice cream from the freezer once and awhile, and he'd put a finger to his lips to tell me not to let mommy know. I did that to him, pressing a finger to his cold lips, and I put his popsicle in his hand.

Like mommy, he wasn't hungry.

I tried to sleep with daddy, but it was too cold and the wind was too loud. Instead, I stumbled into the house and curled up on the kitchen floor with mommy, she wasn't very warm, so I pressed my cheek into her arm and hoped that'd help.

The next day I tried waking them again, punching and pinching. They still couldn't hear me.

The third and fourth day was the same. They didn't eat. They only slept.

I wondered how they were going to the bathroom behind me back.

On the sixth day I concluded that it was some game. Mommy and daddy weren't sleeping. _They were pretending. _Oh, how they tricked me. I laughed and shook mommy's shoulders and I told her I got it now. I found them out and the game was over. "I know you're tricking me, mommy. Wake up now," I said, smiling.

She still wanted to play.

A foul stink started to fill the house by the seventh day. I told them they needed a bath, but they didn't care how awful they smelt. I started to smell, too. I didn't like that. So I took matters into my own hands; I fed myself fine, I got dressed, and I cleaned, and I watched television, there was no reason I couldn't bathe on my own. I went into the bathroom and fiddled with the knobs. But I wasn't strong enough to unstick the lever that made the water run in the shower. I could turn the sink on, though. I stripped and crawled onto the counter, but only my feet seemed to fit. I washed one piece at a time, with the foamy soup next to the toothpaste. I couldn't get all the bubbles out of my hair and it was slick underneath my fingers, greasy when I gripped at it – I couldn't braid, I only twisted and knotted the black hair and wondered if mommy would get upset at the mess. Shifting onto my knees, to admire my reflection, my ankle caught on the facet, my thighs were wet and, in a flail of many limbs, gathering bruises from slamming them into the hard counter-top, I fell off the counter.

Slumped, and against my wishes, I began to cry and I screamed for mom. I screamed louder and wailed for daddy. A pain throbbed on my backside. Splintering aches and a burning pain radiated from the elbow I'd landed on, so bad that for one moment, I thought I heard that sound. That horrifying sound. _Thud, thud, thud. _I sucked the screams back into my lungs. I scrambled naked to the tub, ripped the curtain around me and felt a sob shake its way up my throat.

I squished it back inside with my hand over my mouth.

_Thud, thud, thud._

My heart raced in my chest.

"How the..!" shouted a voice.

That was mommy's friend's voice! I lurched to my feet and ripped the curtain out of my way. The floor was wet, still, and one of my toes caught on the rug. I fell so hard to the tile floor my chin cracked against the ground and I could taste rusted blood seething up through my bottom teeth.

"Gale! Get back to the car! Go.. get in the car.."

I heard Gale's loud voice, asking something, indignant, because he could never really take a punishment well. But mommy's friend shouted at him, louder, shrill and Gale burst in sobs. I had never heard her shout before. Hazelle was always so cheerful. I pulled my green bathrobe from the door, and wrapped it around myself, sucking on my bottom teeth, the sore spot in my mouth pulsing hotly. I could taste salt from the blood and from the tears on my cheeks.

_Thud, thud, thud. _A wailing Gale, being dragged away, and: "Yes, this is Hazelle Hawthorne. There's been.. some sort of attack. No, I don't know who. I'm not in danger. We're far from town.. and you have to come quick. My friends.. there's blood and.. please.. hurry..." her voice faded as she walked away.

I peered out of the bathroom, down the hall, to the open front door. Daddy was still playing.

In the front yard, amidst the snow and wind, I could see Hazelle. Her black hair whipped away from her face as she raced toward the mini-van parked in the driveway, the silver and blue scarf around her neck, flapping at her back. Gale was clinging to her legs, resisting his booster seat.

A phone was pressed to Hazelle's ear.

_He_ was on the phone when he met daddy on the front porch.

No. Daddy slipped on the ice. He bonked his head. Mommy was sleeping and spilled her koolaid.

I went to mommy, to let her know her friend was here. I told her Gale was crying and I didn't like that. I wanted to tell Gale how I made breakfast all by myself. He would be jealous. And then, I wouldn't need to fight over colored pencils. Because I wanted oreos.

"Mommy," I said, shaking her shoulders. "Mommy. Hazelle is here. Gale is here. Can I play with him, now? I don't want to play with you anymore." I felt the throb of my teeth and chin, the tears welling in my eyes, hot and sharp. "Mommy. I don't want to play anymore."

She didn't move.

I was angry suddenly, why won't you listen to me? _Can't you see me?_ "Mommy! Mommy! Wake up!"

_Thud, thud, thud._ "Katniss? Is that you? Sweetheart?"

Beyond her voice I could hear the sound of a car. _Crunch, crunch, crunching,_ against the gravel.

I looked to mommy, but I remembered the way she shoved me toward the stairs. I remembered her frantic hissing and pointing and the way her eyes gleamed – _terrified_. I leapt to my feet in seconds and made a mad dash toward the stairs, just as before, but this time I slipped in the cherry juice I never finished cleaning. I landed hard on my shoulder and cried out.

"Katniss! Sweetheart, it's me. It's Hazelle. Katniss, come to me. Where are you?"

She was coming nearer, climbing over daddy's body, calling –

I tried to scramble onto my hands and knees, but the juice was like jelly, sticking to me. I slipped and slid some paces, closer. The stairs were only a few tiles away. Five tiles. Just five. I'm five. I can make it. It was a lucky sign. Daddy always told me I was lucky.

"Oh, God! Katniss!"

The voice is in the kitchen and I tried to lurch toward the stairs, desperate, but I was stopped before I reached the first step. They were too fast, they were across the kitchen in seconds, and they wrapped their arms around my tummy and pulled me hard to their chest. Terrified, I screamed and wiggled and cried and I heard the _thud, thud, thud_, of footsteps.

Oh, mommy, he knows. He knows I'm in the closet. He's going to get me, mommy.

"She's deranged," I heard Hazelle tell the men in the doorway, as she pinned me to her chest.

I screamed, to block out her words. Didn't she know?

He was still here. I heard him, _thud, thud, thudding_ up the stairs.


	2. Chapter One

A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter. I hope you make it a tradition. Here's chapter one. More to come. -Taryn

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Chapter One

"Wakey-wakey!" trilled the ever agitating voice.

I groaned, threw a hand up to block my eyes from the sunlight, and someone opened the car door next to me. An icy wind swept over my face and I twisted away in distaste, pulling my hands through my hair. "Katniss Everdeen," Effie scolded, when I made no move to join her on the sidewalk, "get up this instant."

The official driver peered uncertainly over his shoulder, through the barred gate between the front seats and the back. "I have places to be," he told Effie.

"Hush, hush," Effie said to him, smiling frailly. "She doesn't like hearing men's voices."

_No, _I thought, _I don't like your voice._

She was saying something encouraging to me in that petulant tone of hers, and I was the first to hear the approaching person; _the snow crunching beneath his feet. _I sat up in an instant, eyes wide, a hand shooting out and grasping Effie by her ridiculous pink jacket and pulling her hurriedly back in the car. But before I could slam the car door, he was there, peering down at me with dark brown eyes. _That's not right._ I stalled; Effie was blabbering about how I upset her curls and wrinkled her pants, while the man continued to stare evenly back at me.

Effie pushed herself to her feet, heels clicking on the ice beyond and she straightened her clothes huffily. Then she noticed my flickering eyes between her and the man. _Who is this? _Effie smiled. "This is Thresh, Katniss. We call him the muscle man around here."

I could see why. Thresh was a man with a hulking disposition, his skin was as dark as charcoal and his shoulders wider than most pro-wrestlers. Something about his face was clenched and stubborn, yet, it held that carefully expressionless mirth that I'd seen in so many other faces when they are the staff in the business that I am so closely related.

Thresh grunted his greeting. I said nothing.

"You have a choice now, Katniss," Effie began, leaning toward me. "Either you will walk nicely to those front doors, or Thresh here can help you. This is your choice, take you time, and think hard."

_I'm not a child, _I wanted to snap, but pursed my lips and actually _did_ think it over. My eyes traveled away from Effie's face and beyond Thresh's height. The front doors couldn't have been more than a hundred paces away from the parking lot; they were glass doors, and I could see no one hiding behind them, waiting for me. That was always reassuring. However, inevitably, I took in the entire building. Five stories of white paneled, sometimes windowed, walls. Tall and threatening and wide. Snow glittered on the front lawn, but closer to us, shoved into the wedge of concrete between sidewalk and parking lot was the dirtied, gray, brown piles of slush, and above a glowing sign with the words _Panem's Mental Institution _written in red letters across it, the snow fell from the roof occasionally, _thudding_ on the ground.

I'd have to run, passed that part, then. Otherwise, it was fine. I could go. I didn't see anything potentially triggering. There wasn't _his_ shadow looming out from behind a frosted shrub. No sign of him. I turned to Effie and nodded.

Her smile is winning. "Perfect! Just perfect, you're starting off great. You are going to love your new home. But I've already promised that before, hadn't I?" Effie stepped away from the door, along with Thresh, to allow me room to step out and the instant I was, the air bit on every bare piece of flesh I possessed. I huddled deeper into my coat and clutched it around my chest, following slowly behind Effie, who clicked her way along. Thresh followed us. I kept my eyes glued on his shadow thrown along the ground to my left, careful, making sure it did not move too swiftly.

When I broke into a sprint to get under the hanging sign, Effie gave a dismayed shout. "That is not safe!" She was disgruntled once she caught up with me, hunched against the glass of the front door. "We have other patients here who are easily flustered by those kinds of things. Respect that. We here at Panem are a _family_."

I'd heard that more times than I could count. And I could count to five-hundred fifty-two in my sleep, _every night_. I'd been kicked out of so many families, I had begun to think Panem would be just another one of those. It wasn't my fault I triggered others, that was their blame to bear; I wouldn't take responsibility for someone else's mental crack.

I wondered if she'd read my file thoroughly enough. It specifically said I don't play well with others. Perhaps, that was what Thresh was for, and I was suddenly not keen on standing by him as he unlocked the front doors with a shiny white key card. I cocked my head.

Effie had traveled all the way here with me for some time, now, and I got the feeling she'd been working for mental hospitals for a very long time, so the silent inquisition was not lost on her. "That's for protection. Both for everyone outside and inside. Only certain staff members get the key cards. You know, fun fact! There were only twelve keys ever made. Warden Coin got us all kinds of new and improved security systems in the last five years."

_Was that a warning, or a promise, or a simple sentence? _I watched both suspiciously once we got inside. The place was heated and the two shrugged easily out of their coats, revealing those primed white uniforms beneath. It made Thresh somehow seem larger. "Now let's see," Effie said, leading us through the pleasant front room. There was a front desk. It was one of those with a glass wall spreading around the area, blocking it off from the entire room. To the side was a barred white door, there was no handle, no window, only a red sign that said contact the front desk. From where I stood, through the plexiglass, I could see the button that controlled the door.

A woman sitting beside it caught my stare. Like Thresh there was no shift of expression, hers was clean and she stared evenly back at me. From the sharp, fine edges of her face and the shock of her red hair, I decided she looked a bit like a fox. Her voice was cool when she greeted Effie; "Good morning, Miss Trinket."

"Good morning." Effie set a careful hand on my shoulder and I glared at it. "This is Katniss Everdeen. We're checking her in. Think we could get a rule book for her to read and her room number?"

"Right away." Foxface twirled away from us on the computer chair she sat in and stopped herself in front of a filing cabinet. Flicking through files faster than I thought anyone could read, she located one, pulled it free, took out a small paper book and then a slip, and kicked herself off the drawer to spin back toward us. She pulled open the small square of glass that moved and placed the items in Effie's traffic cone orange nailed hands.

"Thank you very much!"

They all looked to me then. And I knew what was coming. "Katniss, are you ready to get settled in your new room?" I nodded. "You can do it yourself? Don't need any help? No one here would ever dream of judging you if you need a moment or some aid. There is no judging in this family."

_Family, _I thought, _you keep saying that, but you are the only person I've seen smiling. _But again, I found myself considering her words and what she offered. I glanced around at the front room. It was sweet smelling, something like roses. An array of leather furniture sat to the side; I was tired from long car trips and a court visit on the matter of my new placement and the sight of those chairs made me want to curl up and close my eyes and dream of oreos. _Oreos, _and my stomach grumbled internally, twisting around itself. _Dinner first, then sleep, _I finally decided and I dipped my chin at the staff to let them know I was ready.

Effie clapped her hands for me, excited, and motioned for Foxface to press the button. There was a clear ring, like the frantic call of a bird, when the door swung open and I stiffened. Thresh ushered Effie and I through, signaled a flick of his hand toward Foxface, and the door slammed closed at our back. I was led down the corridor beyond. Noise echoed around us. Voices, a television, someone's laugh, a cough, the clear, thunderously loud snapping of someone's foot on white tiles.

I planted my feet a few yards from the end of the corridor. From where I stood I could see a staircase leading upstairs, and to the sides, there were two other ways to go. On one side the noises came crawling out and the other was silent. I chewed on the inside of my cheek and waited for Effie's voice.

"What's the matter, Katniss?"

I pointed at the steps. Then shook my head.

Effie nodded her approval. "Good communication! And there won't need to be any worry. You're on the bottom floor, in room Twelve B. There won't be any need to go upstairs, I promise. The common room and the cafeteria are both down here and there is a bathroom for each floor at the end of the rooming halls."

_Where is the staff floor? How many rooms is there? How many members are there in this family?_

I had questions, I wanted to know the answer, but somehow, my lips refused to move. It wasn't that I couldn't control them, it was that.. perhaps I don't like her answers. Maybe she'll lie. _What use will those answers be to me, when he's coming after me? _They've ignored my screams before. They've held me in his sight, allowed him to touch me, and I screamed for them, I screamed mother, and I warned them he was there, but they never listen. _Never_.

"Would you like to meet a few of your fellow peers before we bring you to your room?" Effie asked. She'd been trained not to grow impatient, even though we'd been standing in silence, glued to the spot, for more than a few minutes. Even Thresh didn't appear to be bored. I felt deceived. And I shook my head clearly; _I don't like peers._

"Very well, come this way." Effie ventured cautiously forward and I met her footsteps. I liked the sound of her feet more than her voice; it was a delicate thing, the _click, click, clicking_ of her white heels.

Once we reached the end of the hall, to the right there was a long passageway full of doors and at the end there was a bathroom sign on a larger threshold. To the left, sprawled an open area. It was lined with wide windows on the backside, displaying Alaska's snow laden wilderness – row upon row of towering trees could be seen rolling away from the establishment. Within the room there were multiple set ups; from checker boards to a small television with chairs around it, to a table of cards and coaches or nail polish, even a painting section. On the far side, through a archway there was the cafeteria, simple.

What wasn't simple, was all the people I saw moving about. There weren't _that many_. But to me, more than four people was a crowd. There was a blonde teenage girl laying on the floor, laughing, clutching her stomach, and a boy was seated beside her, petting out her hair, smiling. One kid sat next to the window, face almost pressed into the glass. Someone had made a mess of the painting station. Two staff members were talking in calm tones to a ruthless looking fellow who slammed a fist into the card table.

I fled down the roomed hallway before any of them could see me. Effie scolded me again for the running. Then jumped out of her skin when I made a noise, of startlement, at the sight of one of the doors swinging open. I snatched at Thresh's sleeve and attempted to throw him in that direction, as if I were strong enough, or that he were a literal weapon.

Unfortunately, he didn't budge and grunted and gave me a steady stare, before tipping his head very slightly at the door three feet away. I didn't want to look. I closed my eyes. I counted. Effie sighed. "Rue, forgive Katniss. She has trouble with sudden changes or movements."

_No, _I corrected her, _it was the sound. I heard the door creak, creak, creaking. _I hate sudden sounds.

There was the rasping of slipping footsteps approaching me, light as air. "I'm sorry," spoke a small voice. "I didn't mean to scare you."

_I wasn't scared. _To prove that I turned to her. Rue was smiling slightly, and she couldn't have been more than twelve, she was so short, so small, her sweet face chocolate colored and her hair coarse and twisted. I used to look that young. I was heartbreaking back then, to the doctors. I was a broken little girl to clutch and rock and sing to. Then I turned sixteen, and all I was to them was pitiable.

"She doesn't talk much," Effie told her, when I had yet to accept the apology.

"Why not?" Rue asked. Her small hand flitted up to cradle her throat. "Was she hurt?"

"Yes," Effie answered, while I mentally replied, _no. _"Katniss is a psychological mute."

Rue seemed confused. "She doesn't want to talk?"

"I can," I rasped. Effie jumped, and Thresh made a hum almost like amusement.

Rue smiled brightly. "You have a pretty voice."

_I've never been told that. _I eyed her.

Effie cleared her throat. "Well, I'm sure the two of you will have plenty of time to get to know each other, but dinner is in nearly an hour and I would like Katniss to be settled before she meets all the others."

My room was simple. The floor was white, and there were no sharp corners anywhere to be seen. The bed frame was made of a rounded sort of plastic. A familiar smell of bleach leeched from the mattress and sheets, as well as the carefully folded clothes inside my wooden dresser. The only source of color were the walls, the cheap wallpaper peeling slightly along the edge closest to the ceilings, the pale dandelions twisted around each other in tangles of green weeds and a wishy-washy background of sunset orange. I touched the strip beside the light switch; it was textured.

"Here's your book of conduct and the rules we expect you to acknowledge," Effie told me, setting them on my bed, along with the slip. "If you ever forget the schedule or your room number, that piece of paper has it written down. Don't hesitate to ask me, either. You don't have to use them, but we were told you like being independent, so the options are there for you." She looked around the room, pointed at a basket. "That's where you put your dirty clothes, and if you feel the need for new bedding just put them in there as well. Yes? Good? Okay. Dinner is in forty minutes, you're welcome to head out to the common room if you'd like. Otherwise, I'll just let you be.." and she was finally gone.

Predictably the schedule was very routine. I didn't bother memorizing it, but instead, I went straight for the little closet at the back of my room, that was closed off by a handing curtain of green fabric. Inside there was a winter outfit, specifically made for snow and mucking around and I ran my fingers over it. Then I ripped it from the hanger, let the pants and jacket and sweater pile up on the floor, and sat within it. I huddled against the back wall, drew my knees to my chest and admired the alcove of space for a few moments.

_Yes. This will do._

The last institution I stayed at had been a lot less laid back. There were no closets. Our rooms were more like cells, small and cramped and suffocating. Thin walls. _Such thin walls._ An older man in the room next to mine had a knack of tapping his foot on the wall and it would drive me insane. The _tap, tap, tap_, was so close to _thud, thud, thud_. Sometimes he'd speak at me through the wall and I'd ignore him, or he'd whistle and he'd even chortle at me when I slammed my fists right back at his tapping and screamed at him to stop. We didn't get along; but the doctors said _I_ was the problem, not that great old alcoholic who checked himself in far too often.

I was glad to leave him behind. Though it was peculiar, out of the hundreds of other patients, the day I left, he was the only one to see me off. A snark smile, crude hand gesture, and a "It was nice knowing yah, sweetheart" before Effie Trinket made her overzealous introduction. It was odd, because it was _not_ nice. We _didn't_ know each other. Him and I shared only the misfortune of such thin walls.

I rapped my knuckles on the wall beside me. There was no hollow, no responding noise of the vibrations bouncing off the other side and coming back at me. These were nice, thick walls.

To keep my hiding place a secret, I stood, scattered the clothes slightly, and pulled the curtain over the closet tightly. Burning into my back, I could feel unseen eyes watching me. I scanned the room for cameras – there was one. I froze at the sight of it; _he _could use that, to watch me. _He'll know I'm in the closet. He'll know. _Frantically, I dove at the dresser, tore through the clothes and found a shirt. I climbed onto the piece of furniture, balanced and careened over the side, fingers reaching, winding the fabric around the lens. That nerve grating blinking red light was muffled by white.

I sagged in the wall, staring at my accomplished work, then slid down the length of it, until I was sitting on the dresser top. Footsteps rang down the hall. Not thudding. A person walking slow. They pass my room and continue for some ways before stopping. I listen for more. I listen.

That is what I do. I sit still. I listen. I wait. I count. _I wonder if he will find me._

Another caretaker came for me at dinner time, not Effie. There was a ruckus coming from another room, Two A. The caretaker tisked under his breath. "Cato, again. That kid can't keep himself calm for his life."

_Why? _I wanted to ask. _What's wrong with him? _I peered through the door best I could when we passed, but all I got was a flash of Thresh pinning the ruthless blonde boy I'd seen before to the wall, and a nurse sedating him with a needle in his neck. Unease crawled up my throat, drying it, and I picked up pace. The caretaker was of average height, red haired, and a boyish look to him. His name tag said _Darius._

_I didn't trust him._ That went without saying. Darius gave me innocent glances, when my head whipped over my shoulder, from one side then the other, to keep tabs on him. He shouldn't be behind me. Too close behind me. _He _had come up the stairs behind me. I broke into a run once we reached the open area, jolting from a anxious walk to an all out sprint. I was sure once I hit the populated cafeteria I would be safe. Except I had to make sure Darius wasn't faster than me. _He was faster than me.. no, that's not right, no.. _Hazelle.. "Humph."

A hand clutched me tightly on the arm and my chest throbbed momentarily. I reeled to get my head around, to see what I'd hit – it was warm and solid and took the blow with only a slight rebuke. My eyes were level with shoulders, stocky, and they danced up to a face. All I saw was the blonde hair and I flung myself away from him, smacking right into another person. That one shouted an obscenity. A small hand gripped my braid and ripped me downward. Nails were on my throat, clawing and I reacted in kind, flinging two hands out and fisting them into the girl's black hair.

All I could think was that he was laughing. _He laughed when mommy clawed at his face. _Suddenly, it was blonde hair threaded in my knuckles, and the teenage girl's dusky and freckled face was that of _his_. He had my braid and was _yank, yank, yanking_ it. Those squeals escaping his mouth were strangely high pitched when I moved a shaking hand to his throat, almost too slender for him, and the fingers cramped shut.

Vines wrapped around my waist, pulling me from _him_. Around me there was a flurry of white uniformed caretakers. I struggled free, but the vines tightened and crushed me against the warm wall. A voice was in my ear, muttering something I barely caught before Darius ripped me from the hedge; "Watch out for isolation."

_Isolation?_ I screamed incoherently at the sight of the needle. The girl with the black hair was wiggling uselessly in Thresh's thick arms. "Clove! Settle down this instant!" Effie voices snapped me back. There was a moment, as Darius pulled me roughly from the open area back to the roomed hallway, where I glimpse the boy with the blonde hair – there was something awful about the sight of him, the uneven, ravished, red scars crawling up his arms and across his hands and lacing up one side of his neck. But his eyes were blue. _He did not have blue eyes, _I knew, and I went slack in Darius' arms.

I was put into my room for a good ten minutes before Effie came to me. She had plenty to scold about and told me gently that I should not run. _There are people here who take everything as a threat._ Clove's multi-personality disorder was a sensitive thing. "You're lucky Peeta was the one you ran into," she said, more to herself than me. "Marvel would have certainly reacted differently, and Cato would have tried to break your neck. Oh, what a mess. Warden Coin will be most upset with you. She works hard to keep this place in tip-top shape, you know!"

_Watch out for isolation. _I found a question worth asking. "Will she put me in isolation?"

Effie's finely plucked and bleached eyebrows drew tight. "Isolation? No. Of course not. We don't hold such barbaric traditions in Panem. We are a family. Tomorrow morning you will be joining the group therapy session and both you and Clove will formally apologize for what happened tonight."

There was a long silence. I stared at my hands, a finger tracing the path up my wrist to my pointed finger – _the same scars he had. _He lied. There was no isolation. He lied. That was a red flag. He could not be trust. Nor could Darius. Nor Clove.

"Katniss, is that clear?"

Effie. I liked her clicking. Not her voice. I managed a dip of my chin, meeting her stare. "Crystal."


	3. Chapter Two

A/N: I'm sorry it took so long to get this up. Thank you to everyone who favorited or alerted or reviewed. All of it means so much to me. Thank you for reading. Sorry for typos. Reviews are love. -Taryn

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Chapter Two

"So she's a physiological mute. Doesn't that just mean she selectively decides when to speak?" Glimmer asked critically the moment Effie introduced me to the group. The girl leaned forward in her chair, legs crossed, cleavage dipping from the collar of her shirt. Those orbed emeralds glued on me. "That's useful. Deciding when you want to answer someone or ignore them. Even makes a pretty excuse for you. I bet you use that all the time. Don't you?"

My hands were wrapped into fists, tucked in my armpits. There were people all around me; too many of them. All of them watching me. Any number of them could be for _him_. A fact I was painfully aware of. I'd already scoped out the four cameras posted around the common room. Despite the fact that Effie had assured me the cameras were purely for protection, I believed it as strongly as I believed these people around me were my family.

Glimmer laughed girlish to herself when I simply pressed my lips into a line.

Effie cut in with a clipped tone. "That's enough Glimmer."

Darius took a stab at it; "Why don't you share with Katniss why _you_ are here?"

That didn't seem to please Glimmer so much as making fun of me. Further around the circle of chairs, though, the others weren't scared to give it a go. Clove coughed into her fist, "Attention whore."

Cato joined the game, sneezing, "DPD."

Marvel loved being apart of the group; "Jealous bitch."

Effie frowned at all of them, and they either shrugged or grinned widely or examined their nails. Glimmer's face was flaming. She'd sat up again, stiff shouldered, back rigid and the look on her face was one of pure wrath. Thankfully, the person on her right reached out a hand and patted her knee; the attention soothed her. The boy from Four A always turned up to feed her unhealthy need and addiction to unwarranted affection or acknowledgment.

"Does anyone else want to welcome Katniss to our family?" Effie asked once the awkward silence cleared. She sounded painfully hopeful. I followed her stare to that wall kid. Peeta.

I watched him. His ears were pink. Not as pink as his scars. He was wearing a t-shirt yesterday, so I'd gotten a clear view of the tattooed burns spreading up his limbs, but today he wore a jacket. Nothing was visible but the burn that trickled crimson down a cheek, and dripped down the left jaw. A strong jaw. _He_ had a weak jaw.

Rue welcomed me, when no one else made an attempt. "I hope you like it here." Those small hands of hers clutched the edges of the chair that was simply too wide and she smiled up at me, kicking her legs, that couldn't quite reach the floor.

_Who put her here? _I wondered. _What could possibly be wrong with that little girl? _Once people would have said that about me. They were wrong, of course. I belonged in these hospitals. It was safer here. _He_ had a harder time finding me in these towering white walls with muscle men like Thresh and bright, clicking Effie around. Perhaps the little girl was safer here, too.

_He'd told daddy he would take that payment; the little girl._

Daddy had shouted my name. He'd told _him_ no. No, not Katniss. _Please_.

"Katniss, do you have anything to say to Clove?" I looked to Effie, then allowed my eyes to meet Clove's muddy brown ones. There was a slight bruise circling her neck, that'd she'd tried to hide beneath a scarf. It'd been tugged loose, though. Probably due to the stiflingly heat in the building. I wondered how Peeta could stand that jacket.

"I apologize," I said, slowly, specifically. There was a smugness in Clove's face.

"Oh, that's sweet," she replied. Her cloy smile was directed at Effie. "Of course I accept it. Accidents happen, after all. It was a misunderstanding. I apologize, too. I'm happy to welcome a new girl to the group! It makes it even. Level One now has exactly twelve boys and girls. More than Level Two has."

"Level Two is for the older patients," Darius intoned distractedly.

Effie ignored that and clutched at her chest warmly. "That was very sweet, Clove, thank you." Cato snorted. Effie swung around on him. "Do you have anything to add this morning?"

He seemed to think about it, rubbing at his thick biceps and ruffling his spiked hair. It was as though he could not help touching himself. The leering smile he shot my direction turned my stomach over. "Welcome, Katniss."

I choked back a hiss.

Darius motioned at the girl beside Cato to speak. I knew she was from the room Eight B. There seemed to be a pattern in that; and I realized the girl's received B rooms and the boys got A. Would that I knew who was in Twelve A. He would have heard my feet slamming against the closet floor, possibly, last night and the sound of my straggled, _he knows, he knows, _breaking passed my lips. The boy from Eleven A spoke next, but he was distant and forgetful and Thresh, standing silently to the side, opted to return him to his room when the boy asked Effie where he was. Everyone watched them go.

"Well, group." Effie looked around at all of us. "Since this is Katniss' first time in our therapy session, where we all are open and it's a time to share, I think it would be appropriate for one you to show her how it is done. Any volunteers?"

None, at first. The silence dragged on and eyes danced around. I wouldn't do it. I never shared. Not to doctors. Not to peers. Not to the police. Not even to the Hawthornes.

However, Peeta raised his head and gave a weak half flick of his hand. "I'll share."

"Oh, good!" The cheery woman turned to him in complete investment. "We're all listening, Peeta."

"I remembered my brother's name."

"You did? I never knew you had a brother."

That gave Peeta's face a puzzled twist. "It wasn't in my file?"

"Er. Well," Effie faltered. "It simply said you had no family."

"No. I don't." Peeta clasped a hand over his thigh for a moment, nervous, then shrugged those stocky shoulders. "My brother's name was Rye."

"Like the bread?" Rue asked demurely. She peeked shyly up at him.

I was slightly miffed when Peeta met her stare and displayed a warm smile to put her at ease. "The very same."

"And, let me guess, your mum was named 'Wheat'?" Marvel said dryly.

Clove kicked the leg of Marvel's chair. "Ignore him, Peeta. He's a jerk. _I_ was listening," she said earnestly, clinging to her sweet side that morning. I didn't miss the dark look the girl from room Four B shot Clove, but no one else seemed to notice the things I did. Like the footsteps. Thresh was returning. I was the only one to turn and watch.

Clove opted to share next. "I had an awful dream last night." There were scuffs from Glimmer and empathetic sighs from others, and Cato simply narrowed his eyes at the girl as though he suspected her of something – which made me suspect something. What if Clove was sending messages, coded, from _him_? "There was this pool, right? It was just black. I was crossing this bridge.. and.. this happened.. then.." My eyes flickered momentarily away from Clove's face and I noted, in a jolt, someone was watching me. Blue eyes. I tensed up. _What was he looking at? _Peeta flushed, turned away, and gazed determinedly at Clove.

_He lied. He lied. _Maybe he was sent to mislead me. Clove isn't _his_ partner, it's Peeta.

The rest of the therapy session went by slowly. I kept close tabs on every noise and movement the whole lot of them made. I listened to every word shared – though most of it was nonsense and nothing insightful. Effie talked too much. The girl from room Seven B cried over a lost earring from fifth grade. Cato burst out an angry objection when Marvel accused him of eating the last slice of pizza a month ago.

It was nearly time for breakfast, the session over, when Effie turned to me. "Would you like to share?"

I shook my head. _He would hear. He would know. He promised me, he shouted, he told me._

"_I'll know, girl. I'll know the moment you talk. Where ever you are. I'll know."_

"Come on, you can tell us. It's not hard. Anything. Tell us anything," Clove encouraged.

I looked uneasily around at the others. He _will_ know. That was certain. The question was how. How will he know? The cameras? Glimmer? She smiled stiffly at me when my eyes swung around the circle. Cato smirked. Rue perked up and bounced on the edge of her seat. Marvel shrugged one shoulder. Effie brought her hands together, as though to clap, and Darius tapped an idle foot. _Tap, tap, tap._

"Tell us your favorite color," Peeta suggested.

I whipped my head around to look at him, met his gaze, held it. _No_, I thought, "You tell me."

"Orange. Soft, like the sunset."

Almost unconsciously my lips parted, forming the word _green. _But I locked it up inside me. I turned aside my face and picked at the edge of my shirt. He lied. He lied. _Watch out for isolation. _That didn't hold any value, his words didn't. I would not waste mine on him. _He will know._

Breakfast was called for afterward. We parted, returning our chairs to their respective spots. I dove for the kitchen serving counters, toppled on my tray as much food as I could, then found a corner to eat in. No one questioned my solitude. There were plenty others who kept to themselves, out of the twenty-four of us. There were clear gatherings, though. Clove called over the most; Cato, Glimmer, Marvel, both boy and girl from the rooms Four, and the boy from room Three A. The girl from room Eight B sat next to the Peeta boy, smiling shyly, and Rue joined them when Peeta welcomed her over at the wave of his hand.

_Watch out for isolation._

Perhaps he hadn't meant the type of isolation I'd thought.

Was it possible he meant isolation from the others? Had my attack on Clove cut some social tie I was unaware of? Were there glares being sent my way that I'd failed to notice? Shadows were suddenly everywhere and all of them looked like _his_. I couldn't sit here. I was prepared myself to abandon my tray and make an escape, with the intent of reaching my closet. _He wouldn't find me there. I could be alone and safe in there. _But a man noticed my paranoid glances, the tense of my shoulders, and he slipped into the seat next to me.

_No,_ I resisted internally, _I have to leave_. I peered over at him. There was something feline about his appearance. Only in the way that he was sleek and handsome and moved with a gentle grace.

The male caretaker indicated a hand at my food. I noted a peculiar ring of gold eyeliner around his eyes. "Is there something urgent calling you away from your food, Miss Everdeen?"

I shook my head.

"Well is there something wrong with the food?"

I looked over the meal; an assortment of soggy green beans, clumpy mashed potatoes, and a pungent cheesy pasta. I had no problem with it before, but after he mentioned it, I felt apprehensive about the whole thing. My eyes returned to his, staring, wondering if he knew something.

"Is there something else I can get you?" he asked politely.

I pressed my lips into a line, teeth gnawing at my cheek.

"I see." He offered me a hand and I shrank away. "My name is Cinna."

Clearly, I could read. The name tag pinned on his uniform stated that exact thing. Except, I was relieved all the same when he told me his name. Letters could lie. That uniform could have been stolen. Cinna might not have been a worker in Panem at all. The doubts filled my mind. Until I could not decide one way or the other. Until I decided _he_ had something to do with it. Everything became much simpler when _he_ was involved. When he was linked to something, anything, in any miniscule way, I knew that instantly, I had to reject it, had to distance myself from it.

I stood abruptly, clumsily. The bowl of mashed potatoes tumbled over thanks to the _bang_ of my knee on the underside of the table and fell to the bench with a _splat_. Cinna looked at it, for a moment, then looked to me. He smiled, began to say something about it being of no matter, and I turned away, wrapped an arm around my torso. I took a skittish seat in the table three from mine, thankfully empty. I ignored the stares.

There, I tried to pretend things were alright. I mean.. I figured that I wasn't really that hungry anyway. Out the corner of my eyes, Cinna and another woman began to clean up the mess I made. No one approached me. Did not even glance my way. (They knew better, I suspected.) Panem had well trained staff members, that much was evident.

Eventually I cooled myself down. A false alarm, really. It was better to be out in the open, as of that moment, with the loud voices of the other patients around me. The closet would always be there.

I heard a stampede of footsteps. Effie entered the common room in the lead of a whole line of twenty-four other patients. They huddled into the same corner we on Level One had just vacated, pulling chairs and huffing and yawning and sighing at the perky sound of the head nurse's voice. "Are we all ready to share?" Effie chirped, loud enough for me to hear in the cafeteria.

Unfortunately, I couldn't hear any of their replies from where I sat. What I could make out of the patients was that they were certainly older. Some far more than others. None were teenagers. The youngest had to be a twenty-something young woman who sat in the chair backwards, scratching shapes into the wood with her untrimmed nails.

Thresh escorted four of them back to their rooms twenty minutes into the group therapy session. I had thought before that our session was in a ruin, but evidently, we were the good group. The first was a bedraggled young woman whom had started to rock and Thresh scooped her up as if she were nothing more than a kitten. Next went a handsome man who stomped (_durm__, durm, durm)_ after the woman, hands fisted at his side, and Thresh followed dutifully. An older woman, silver laced brown hair curled in her fingers, began to scream at another member of the group and Thresh pulled her out by an arm. (For the woman's credit, she remained dignified and aloof). The last to fail was an older man, clearly a past drug-user by his sagging yellow-ish skin, and his withdrawal symptoms caused him to collapse.

None of them screamed guilty of deception, but I watched all as carefully as I could. _He_ wasn't among them. Not that I expected him to be. He usually hid himself better. He was good at what he did. I knew that. So when we (that being the twenty-four adolescent patients of Level One) were escorted carefully passed the patients of Level Two (who were inadvertently heading in to have breakfast) I used the most of my hands and arms to cover my face from their eyes.

Back in the common room Effie assigned us a helper for the day. (I was explained to that they lasted a week, then we got a new one for the next week, but it was always within a carefully chosen group, as to remain familiar and trustworthy.) I got a plump woman named Octavia. Gaudy, heavy makeup slathered her face. The eyeshadow was a particular pea green that contracted sharply against the plain white of her uniform. "Katniss!" I cringed at her greeting. "Oh, Effie told me so much about you."

Usually that would have spiked my blood and I would have sent Effie an unforgiving glare, but I knew Octavia was not _his_ type. No. Glimmer was more his type. I watched the blonde the entire time Octavia painted my nails for me. (She had _insisted_. It would distract from the scratch marks Clove left on my neck, she said. It would make me look lovely and it would take up the time we had to wait to use the showers.) Glimmer was glued to the attention of the boy from Four A (whose name, I caught by eavesdropping, turned out to be Sal) and I decided that she though Sal was wrapped around her pretty finger, but she was really on his.

Peeta played chess with the girl from Eight B. I leaned over the table when Octavia added a clear coat over the evergreen and I pretended to be absorbed in the sight of them, admiring them. She was saying something about it, to me, placating me, but I had no care. I was listening farther away. "Aly," he'd called the girl. Peeta and Aly. They were friends, I could tell by their shared smiles, the way he let her win. (He could have taken that king three times, I _saw_ it and felt like going over and pointing, but knew better.)

I caught a hug between Rue and a woman from Level Two. They were separated instantly and Rue was dragged off. I frowned and turned away, looking for something else to watch, to note, to remember for later. I was taking inventory while I could. Clove was slashing at a tabletop with a pen, while Cato talked over the sound, telling her a bawdy story. She didn't seem to be listening, her eyes dark and her mind elsewhere, her lips sneered. She was not the same Clove that was at the therapy session.

Darius was watching after the boy from Five A. That man, Cinna, was smiling and teasing with a co-worker whose name tag said _Portia. _After a few minutes, they parted, and I watched Cinna speak kindly to Aly. The two left the common room and Portia helped Peeta set up the chess board again. They played. It seemed an even match throughout the game, until I noticed an easy win for Peeta. (I saw it, I stared at it and he did, too. My eyes followed his across the checkered board and I know he saw it, then sacrificed a bishop, ruining his path.) Portia won, and afterward, they, too, left the room.

Octavia was painting her own artificial, three-inch long nails when I finally returned my attention to her. I spoke none. Just stared, and she smiled, put aside the cosmetic and stood. "Would you like to shower? Or you could wait until tomorrow, if you'd like. You're scheduled for a half-hour exercise just before lunch, then a after meal nap. Which really is only cool down in your room. The rest of the day goes to free time, dinner, then lights out. Do you have objections? Do you understand what's happening today? Any requests I can try to fulfill?"

She spoke in that same accent as Effie, but less high-pitched and certainly slower. Slow, in the way that made me feel as though she thought me simple or dim. I scowled, didn't reply, but stood and walked away. She followed, huffing to keep up. That was how it continued to be for the day. Me pacing ahead, her lagging behind.

For exercise I was let into a white-walled room with various bars and mechanisms for muscle building. I picked up a heavy ball and tried to bounce it. Didn't work. I'd seen plenty people play basketball on television, when I actually watched it, and for some reason the fact that the ball didn't bounce bewildered me, and made me uncertain. I picked it up and twisted it in my hands. Dimly, I remembered Gale's father used to keep one of those peculiar orange balls in their garage (right next to the shiny red scooters). Obviously, despite the heavy ball being orange, it wasn't a basketball. Unbidden, I made the decision Peeta would not like the color of the ball. It was too bright. However, the shade was almost the same as Foxface's hair.

I threw it at the wall a couple of times and ran about to catch it. Aches spread through my arms, tight and bruising. I closed my eyes a moment. I saw my mother. Curled finger-shaped tattoos rising violet and squash green on the backside of her neck. Once, I might have dismissed those marks as a new and silly makeup idea. I knew, now, that they weren't. That he had to have wrapped his hands around her throat to leave those behind.

Fervently, I hoped he saw the impressions I left on Clove's neck.

Lunch came and I sat alone. Rue joined me nearer the end. Her own caretaker, Flavius, sat happily and talked to Octavia. We, the patients, spoke none. I ate all of my food. (Skipping breakfast turned out to be a mistake.) The boy from Seven A had a melt down of some sort. That triggered Cato. Thresh, imposing and clean faced, came out of no where and dragged the ruthless boy from the cafeteria before he could cause too much commotion.

Down time in my room was the hardest part of the day. As Octavia escorted me to my room, I saw Portia walking Peeta to his own. The boy was in Twelve A, and I caught his eye when I passed. He looked away immediately, tugging the hood of his sweatshirt over his face. Suspicion rose painfully in my chest and I sat in my closet, listening for something from his side of the wall for the whole break. Only, they were too thick. That made me think of my last room mate. I wondered where Haymitch was. If he ever really worked for _him_.

The camera in my room, wrapped in two shirts and a pillowcase, still bore into my bones. After the fifteenth glace sent around the fabric of the closet covering, I got up, stalked over to the dresser, climbed and examined the mount. It was metal, new and shiny. I tampered with the bolts in the wall. None were loose. In the end, I took a pair of socks and slipped both tightly over the snout of the lens, on top of all the other things.

Octavia tisked at me for that, later. Free time came, but I sat contently in my closet for nearly three hours. When Octavia did come in, for a heartbeat, she considered me missing. Effie came back with the panicked caretaker and pointed to the closet, _gave me away. _I glared at Effie, and ignored the way she clicked away. Octavia sat on my untouched bed. "Did you sleep in this last night?" she asked.

I returned to the closet and ripped the curtain shut. Eventually, she left, but inevitably returned to bring me to dinner. The common room was full of Level Two patients when I crossed through it. I felt extremely exposed. A man and woman sat together at the painting station and lifted their heads when I passed; they looked to be twins, both so similar. Octavia noticed the way I attempted to hide behind her wider frame to get away from their stares. "Oh, that's just Gloss and Cashmere, they won't hurt you none."

_Then why are they here, in a mental institution? _They had to be a danger to others or themselves to be here. Something was wrong with everyone I had chosen to lock myself in the same building with. Rue came to mind, and I spotted her sitting at the table we'd eaten at together earlier that day. I decide to join her, only because I wanted to puzzle out why she was here in the fist instant. I could ask, I figured, but that seemed to give away something. Would the answer matter? No. No, it wouldn't. I stopped trying to figure out why everyone around me was there and focused on eating my custard.

Then someone knocked my milk over. I looked up instantly and saw Peeta. He was smiling, strained. "Sorry," he said. He snatched the few napkins that Octavia tucked under my tray and wiped dutifully at the spill. I recoiled from his suddenly appearance, eying him, but he leaned forward and muttered. "She's here, watching you."

I went rigid. _Who?_ I scoped the room in vain. Peeta's hand caught my wrist, fleetingly, and he tipped his head to the left. There, stood a young girl. She was small, with a face as fresh as a raindrop, blonde hair braided in two pigtails. I felt my mouth parch when her wide blues eyes met mine.

Rue was hissing at Peeta. "You _told_ her?"

"Someone had to," Peeta said, defensively.

The mess was cleaned by then and Octavia finally noticed our new guest. "Peeta! Where's Portia?" She looked to me, saw my panicked eyes, and frowned. "Katniss, are you alright with Peeta being here?"

"No. I'm leaving." He backed away. Aly stood some paces away and she attached an arm to his and they both fled the cafeteria. I watched them cross the common room and their caretakers took off after them, scolding and slightly miffed.

Flavius and Octavia looked equally confused, before they shook their heads. "Peeta is usually very composed," Flavius said. "Warden Coin said the nightmares are back."

"Poor boy," Octavia sighed.

I ignored them. In the corner of the room, I saw the girl from before was gone. She'd been wearing the standard whites of the staff. Really, she couldn't have been any older than Rue, and even more sweet looking. So why had Peeta felt the responsibility to warn me against her? Why had Rue been horrified he had?

After dinner there was an hour of common room time. Level Two was escorted to their own dinners, and before I could get a word with Rue, about what just happened, she begged Flavius to take her to bed. Normally, I would have asked to be taken to my own room. Except, I felt the need to figure out what was going on. I sat on the chair near the television, where Octavia was absorbed in the program and I could see everyone in the room.

Cato noticed my stares and approached. "Wait," Octavia told him. She looked to me sweetly. "Is it alright if Cato joins us?"

I shook me head, _no_.

"Sorry, but Katniss wishes to be left to herself," she told Cato.

Cato clenched his fists. "I see." He stomped off, _clang, clang, clang_, and slumped into a chair next to Glimmer. There, he said something that made the girl turn my way; her eyes were glowing emeralds. Amused, far too much, than I'd like.

I waited to see if Peeta would come back, or even that young girl that had been watching me, but neither did. Aly did after forty minutes or so, and I sat up and Octavia noticed the intensity in which I regard the girl. "Is there something you'd like to say, Katniss?"

I could ask about the girl, or request we are introduced. Instead, I inclined my head to the hall and walked myself to my room. I paused before I reached mine and knocked on Twelve A. Octavia stood stiffly behind me, not quite objecting, but cautious.

_Thud, thud, thud, _came from behind the door. I felt my heart tighten. _He stomps. _It sounded eerily like footsteps clamoring upstairs. Despite the blurring illusions in front of me, it was Peeta behind the door. A hood was pulled over his head; it worked well to hide the burn on his jaw. His eyes shown friendly in the shade, though, and the only thing they had in common was the blonde hair. _He_ had black eyes.

"Hello?"

He peaks at Octavia when I am silent for too long. Why had I knocked? I couldn't remember, only that I remembered the girl. I wanted to ask why he pointed her out, why she was important, what she could do to me. If she was working for _him_. But how could Peeta know if she was? That was what I needed to know, whether or not Peeta knew _him_. Thoughtfully, my eyes traced the rifts of the scars on his hands, until he shoved them in his pockets. His cheeks were pink when I looked back up at him.

"Did you want something?" he asked.

He acted as though what happened earlier hadn't occurred. I pressed my lips into a line and put my own hand out between us. Peeta looked at it for a moment. "Yes?"

"Green." I curled the fingers to display the nails his way. _That's my favorite color._

Octavia raised a hand to rest on my back, mouth opening to apologize to him about me and my antics, but Peeta understood perfectly. "Was that really so hard?" he asked.

_No. _I turned from him and entered my own room. I heard my caretaker say something to him before she joined me and fluffed my bed and bid me a goodnight. I waited until she was gone to curl up in my closet. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the little girl with her pig tailed braids.

_Who is she? What does she do? More importantly, why are the other patients afraid of her?_


	4. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

It was the sound of their footsteps that woke me; a _tap, tap, tapping_. My eyelids fluttered open in an instant, fighting off the remnants of dreams. Hours had passed since I'd been put to bed and even less time since I had finally shoved aside the mystery of the little girl to capture such sleep.

I was in the closet, where I usually slept, and I clutched at my hair and huddled closer to the back wall, knees shrinking into my chest. The door and whoever may be just outside of it were somewhere beyond, on the far side of the room, hidden from me. To get a good look I would have to move, lean forward, reach out a hand to rip aside the curtain, and I wasn't about to let on that I was _awake_. That was a four-year-old's logic: if you can't see it, it can't see you.

But I knew how things worked by then. A four-year-old's logic is more likely to get a person killed than saved. I blinked and let my eyes adjust to the dark. Fingers of hallway-light reached through the crack under the door and stretched across the floor, nearly touching the edge of the closet's curtain. I strained to hear anything, something in the room with me, _him, _but there was nothing except for my stuttered breathing.

For a moment I thought I could have dreamed the tapping.

But there it sounded again. I tensed up, my eyelids closed to small slits. I could pretend to be asleep but still _see_. The doorknob was rattling, and the lock was being tapped with a pick. What I saw in my mind's hindsight was him; tall, shadowed, covered in blood, with hard black eyes and dirty blonde hair. The door _creaked_. A figure loomed, silhouetted across the fabric that covered the closet. My tongue was thick and dry in my mouth. _He_ reached out a hand. I was up quickly, ready –

– smashing the top of my head into the clothes-hang bar suspended above me.

I hissed in pain, forgot my visitor momentarily, and placed a hand over my throbbing skull. A surprisingly small – _not his_ – hand clamped over my mouth, shoving me against the closet wall. "Do you want to wake the whole fucking floor?" Clove careened over me, the hallway-light catching the planes of her face in such a way that she is all wide, hard angles and sickly-yellow skin.

Behind her stood three others; Glimmer, the girl from Four B, and another girl from Three. All watched passively as I rubbed at the egg-sized lump on my head, frowning. _What are you doing here?_

"See, she won't even talk now." Clove sent Glimmer a superior glance. "Told you she wasn't acting."

"Yeah, well, whatever. Just decide to take her or not. I don't have time for this." With that Glimmer slipped out of my room into the light-filled hall and Three went with her like a puppy to its master.

Four B stayed and wrapped her arms around Clove, looking unstable. "Will she come, Clo?"

"Yes, Mermie." Clove ran an absentminded hand through the girl's tangled brown hair. "Come on, Katniss, tonight's not a good night to be in bed. Trust me." Together, they turned to leave, but I sprung forward and grasped Clove's thin shoulder.

I pointed to the camera wordlessly.

Clove's smile was near mocking. "You think those are real?" _Of course. _I nodded, setting my jaw. "Don't worry about the cameras, they're just show." She reached out to take hold of me, but I twisted away.

For one moment it looked as though Clove would struggle with me, like she would drag me unwilling, argue with me, perhaps begs. Then the moment passed. Clove's dark eyes hardened. "Fine," she said. "Stay. Newbies should take the first couple of days, anyway." They left in a whisper of footfalls. The door swung shut behind them, sapping away the light in the room and abandoning me in the dark.

Slowly, feeling out the wall with my hands, I crawled back into my closet. The moment I got settled amongst the piles of clothes there came a soft knocking on my door. _Rap, rap, rap._ Strange, I had not heard anyone approach. The knock came again. _Rap, rap, rap._ I became aware that I had not locked the door after Clove picked and slammed it. I waited for the second intruder to push it casually open… they knock a third time.

I didn't want to answer it. _Is it Clove with her facets changed? Come back to apologize? To explain her strange words ("Newbies should take the first couple of days...")? _I flipped onto my hands and knees, then crept cautiously out of the closet onto the floor beyond and watched a heavy shadow shift in front of the slit beneath the door.

"Katniss," whispered a voice beyond, a deep one. That stirred lots of bad memories, which I pushed aside. I stood and crossed the room. I strained to hear them speak, two hands wrapped around the door knob. "Katniss… Clove didn't..." I opened the door; my second visitor of the night was Peeta.

He stood there illuminate in the hallway-light, blinding me momentarily. A halo of yellow hair crowned his head and a huge black sweatshirt was yanked up to his cheekbones, muffling his voice. "You should come with us," he murmured, glancing down the hall. I spotted Clove and the other girls disappearing there. Aly stayed standing against the corner, lingering, waiting for Peeta no doubt.

I raised both my eyebrows at him. _Why? What do you want?_ Then, I wondered if he would elaborate on the little girl from earlier, if he would tell me, finally, what he meant by isolation. The math was hard to figure out; the risk from the benefit. If I went with him he might tell me. What if it was a trap though? Would they all ambush me in the dark halls? Push me down the stairs? Force me to walk up them? I shuddered in disgust.

Peeta noticed. "Not far. Just outside," he said. "Trust me."

_Trust him? _That was the most ludicrous thing I'd heard. It was the one thing he could have said that would turn me instantly cold to him. That's what all predators want their prey to think; that they can be trusted. I hardened my face and crossed my arms tight over my chest. _No. A thousand times no. _I don't trust, not him, not anyone. Not since...

"Katniss, you don't want to stay here tonight."

I turned aside my face; _I'll decide that for myself, thanks._

Aly spoke from down the hall, timid and frightened. "Peeta…" _Peeta, Peeta, Peeta, _his name echoed against the walls. "We can't stay. It's getting late. We can't stay." She grew increasingly uncertain when Peeta didn't answer or turn to acknowledge her. He stared hard at me. She took three steps backward, away, headlong after the others. "Peeta?"

No answer.

She sprinted away.

Something in Peeta's face mirrored her own fear. "Come with us, Katniss." He offered a hand, I looked down to see the burns. He wore gloves. "Please."

_Please, _my mother had once said. "_Please, please, please," _she sobbed. I could see her, struggling with the man in the dark kitchen, fighting tooth and nail, being flung into the counter-tops by the hulking figure of _him_. Then she's not. She's hissing at me and pointing to the stairs. The way her eyes gleamed, _terrified_, and she wanted me gone, and told me to hide.

I glanced back at the closet. I couldn't leave even if I wanted to.

_I'm staying where it's safe, _I conveyed by hooking a thumb behind my back.I moved to close the door, but Peeta's hand shot out and kept it open for a fraction of a second. I panicked; heart flying I ripped at his wrist, tore it from the wood and slammed the door shut so hard the frame rattled. Just for good measure I flipped the lock and scrambled away until the back of my knees hit the bed and I dropped back onto the mattress.

I waited for him to kick it in. Except that was silly on my part. Peeta lingered for no more than the space of a heartbeat. Outside in the hall someone joined him, a boy. I heard their fierce whispering. I couldn't hear what most of the words were, but I caught: _"For her?" _and a _"...least I could do..." _before there was running footsteps and a _creak_ of the door from the room beside mine. It was Peeta, going back to his bed.

I wanted to throw myself at the wall, in a hysterical fit, beating my fists, like I used to for Haymitch; a familiarity thing. I controlled the impulse merely because I could not shake the oddity of what had just transpired. Clove came to take me away and I refused her. Then Peeta tried to coax me to do the same and I slammed the door in his face. Why were the patients leaving… to go outside... and why were they scared to stay? Why were they seemingly banded together by this? Why would the cameras be fake? How did the staff not know?

I couldn't will myself to stand and move to the closet, so I stayed on the bed curled up around my knees. By no means was it pleasant. The mattress was hard and lumpy, smelt of chemicals, and every time I moved the springs screeched in protest. I rolled tiredly, pulling hands over my face. Sleep would not come to me. There were too many uncertainties in my head.

I wondered when the others would come back from outside. Presumably when the danger had passed, but when was that? _Would I know?_

For near half an hour I lay there, counting. It was a good pass time for me. I got to three thousand thirty-two when I noticed the sound of people beyond my door. My chest filled so suddenly with dread when I noticed the shadows pause near my side of the hall. Two shadows, specifically. They whisked by. The door next to my room opened; _click_, _creak._ A soft, girlish voice issued through the crack underneath my door. Her words were muffled.

Peeta's wasn't. _"Please."_ Then he called nothing more.

The shadows were three when they passed again, the door swung shut none too quiet. I was left, sitting up at attention, eyes wide in the dark, knees hugged to my chest. I scrambled to my closet the second I was sure no one would hear. Somehow I knew they would be coming back.

Minutes later, as predicted, the footsteps returned. I heard doors opening. I imagined them finding each empty, one after another. Will they wonder or know where the others had gone? I didn't dare breathe.

My door was opened last.

A man stood beside a small girl in the frame. Like Peeta they were silhouetted by the light that shined from the hall, but instead of brightening them, it made them stand out too starkly, made their edges frayed and sharp. Blinking in the sudden harshness, it took me a minute to realize it was the girl that Peeta had warned me against. She seemed especially rougher in that light; older, somehow, more fourteen than twelve. They both looked at me solemnly. I lunged away, but a needle in the man's hand was quicker, and stole my strength and breath.

I could not have shouted _please_ even if I had tried.

"Stay calm," the girl said. "It is better when you behave. That's all we want."

The man stooped to pick me up. He was not as big as Thresh; more portly than muscled, the soft bulge of his abdomen supporting me just as much as his thick arms. I struggled against the drugs in vain. They lay heavy on my limbs, pressed on me from all sides, pushed me further to their will.

"Stay calm," the girl said, again, as we exited the room and made down the hall. "My name is Primrose, but you can call my Prim." She smiled shyly. "I will be your escort for the evening."

_Is that what she is? _I wondered, foggily. _Before, when I had knocked on Peeta's door, I had wanted to know who she was and she says an escort. _An escort of fourteen, possibly thirteen, that came to abduct me from my room late in the night? _Is this what the other patients fear? The approaching tap, tap, tap of this unlikely pair's footsteps at the hour of the dead, coming to creep inside their rooms, snatch them from their beds... _and bring them where?

To my horror we approached a door that gave way to a staircase, spiraling downward. Which meant if I were ever to escape I would encounter stairs, and be forced to climb them. I was struck blind with a panic so sharp I gasped and twisted and would have cried out my fear if my throat would work as I wanted it to. _This is his doing. He is taking me. These are his men. _I looked despairingly to Primrose; perhaps I could win over the girl, if nothing else. She smiled wider. "Don't worry," she said. "We're here to help."

"Warden Coin wants her back in her room before group therapy," the big man carrying me told Prim.

"Of course," Prim said. She stepped ahead once the stairs ended and we came across another door, heavily secured. Around her neck hung a white card similar to the one Thresh used to open Panem's front doors. The one she had opened the door at the end of the stairs; it slipped effortlessly into a slot and the door gave a soft wail before swinging open. "Warden Coin has ordered a special session for you," she said to me.

I watched the girl twirl into the room, flipping on switches and dancing her way to the padded table in the middle of the floorspace. Leather straps lay dormant across it. The fat man dropped me there, and Prim's hands moved easily to secure the bands over my wrists, ankles, hips, and shoulders. In my mind, I was screaming and thrashing. Bodily I was limp, dead. "The tranquilizer will wear off in a few minutes," Prim reassured me, as though knowing my thoughts.

Making up the right side of the room were rows of glass cabinets. I watched the girl pick through the shelves, examining bottles of medicine, setting them aside for later. _What are those for? _I willed to know, would have asked if only I had my voice. Why was it I wished to speak only when I could not?

On the other side of the room a woman emerged. Her white uniform was primed and folded neatly against all her sharp curves. A mass of black hair was piled onto her head in a bun, drawing harsh line from her face. Had I imagined it or was there the briefest twist of her lips directed toward Primrose? "That is well enough. I'll call you once Katniss is in need of an escort. You're dismissed."

"Warden." Primrose gave a half-stumbled curtsey, then left.

This woman was Warden Coin then. She made me think of marble; cold expression and bleach-white skin, stiff in the way she moved and just as seamless. Coin seemed unfeeling, but composed and pleasing to look at because of how symmetrical her features were. I stared at the one tiny hair out of pace beside her ear and found comfort in the one imperfection.

"Miss Everdeen, we meet," she said, disdain in her eyes. "I have watched you from afar before, I admit. But it is nice for you to meet me face to face. After all, I will be your soul guardian while you stay here in my asylum. There are no relatives who've claimed the rights to your decisions until you're eighteen so that is also to my control. This is important for you to know."

_Why? _Cotton stuck my throat, choked the words from my grasp. I could understand the woman was the owner to Panem's mental hospital and that she sent the man and girl to collect me in the middle of the night, without the other staff members or patients knowing, but I worried, more, about the _why_ of it. Why take me in the middle of the night? Assuming the other patient's fear is in the right place, why take them, also? _Why had Primrose set the medicine out?_

Warden Coin paced around the padded table toward the covered tray beside me, where Prim had placed the supplies moments before departing. With a flick of a finger she removed the cloth covering the tray, and revealed multiple syringes placed in a straight and perfect row. She crooked one. "Here in my asylum, I conduct… treatments for the ill."

_No, _I thought. _No, I don't take treatments. Never have. The pills make me worse._

Carefully, Warden Coin lifted one of the syringes to face level and pressed the excess air from the needle. "You've already met one of my trainees," she continued to speak, in such a cool and passionless tone. "I have no doubt Primrose introduced herself. She is a good pupil, quick learning, and eager to please. She used to be a patient here, but I cured her." Coin pulled a strip of rubber free from the tray, wrapped it around my exposed elbow and tied it unbearably tight, until the veins of my arms leaped against my skin. "In no time, you'll be better. Perhaps you could become a part of my program as well. We just have to find the right medicine, is all. This one seems promising… considering the test we've gotten back from your past doctors, but one never knows. I'll be observing you more in the coming days."

At the pinch of the needle in my arm, the air I had been sucking for desperately in the past few minutes came sharp and hard. I struggled, feebly, and once Coin placed the empty syringe aside, I was overwhelmed with what she was saying. She does experiments on her patients, the ones without family, without someone to know, or to tell. (And who would believe a crazy person anyway?) I wanted to demand to know exactly what she'd put in my body. Or worse… what she'd put into Rue's, or any other patients. Except, I couldn't. My tongue was useless. I felt heavy and slow… and...

Coin called for the others as she peeled off her rubber gloves. Primrose and the man appeared in the room at once. "Heavensbee, Prim, escort Katniss to isolation for a nap, then return her to her bed before the others are awake and frolicking."

Primrose came forward, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "How are you feeling?" she asked me, eyes bright. Apparently unphased by the way I slumped sideways against my restraints. "Do you feel any better yet? Do you still see _him_? Can you speak now? Are you still scared of stairs?"

The fact that she knew all that about me chilled me.

Coin laughed in a cutting way. She tugged almost playfully on one of Prim's braids. "Contain your curiosity, child. It may your best quality and just what someone in this business needs to have to succeed, but please, save the questions for later on the follow up. Document each symptom Miss Everdeen presents from now on, and get the file to me as soon as possible," and with that Coin departed.

Together, Prim and Heavensbee hauled me to my useless feet, as weak as grass beneath me. My neck felt made of rubber, falling one way, then the other. Still, I struggled to breathe. Prim chattered on and on... until I felt the embrace of cold leather again. Around me a small dark room whirled. Bright spots dotted my vision. Prim's face hovered close to mine, smiling, and she placed a small hand to my forehead. She promised me that Warden Coin would heal me; _like her_.

Then a heavy door slammed shut. With the people the light went with them. I could see no window, no anything, only blackness and close walls and a cold sting to the air. Otherwise, there was nothing.

I finally found out what isolation was.

At some point, I fell into a state of semi-sleep. (Being kidnapped at a time when one would usually be sleeping induced such.) Weight packed around me within the dream. My legs felt both warm and dead at the same time; I couldn't move them. Something, something big and oppressive, hovered over me, lay thick over my being and suppressed me. My left arm was trapped (underneath the same thing that made breathing so difficult), while my right laid spread outward from my body, white with light.

_What happened?_ _Where am I?_ Just those two simple thoughts had me swooning. Instead of thinking, I assessed more of my position, where I lay. My face was cushioned against the coarse touch of wet hair. Blood trickled over my chin, and swam out of my mouth with every painful huff of breath I managed. My first thought, that wasn't interrupted with imagined pain, was that _I didn't make it up the damn stairs_ and that my hand feels oddly _empty_.

Without understanding either thoughts, I woke, fingers contorting into a fist. I noted, again, vaguely, how empty my hands were. What belonged there, I didn't know. Only that I had the worst headache in the world. A nasty throbbing radiated behind my ears, eyes, and skull, matching to the throb in my joints. Above me hovered Octavia's round face, pea green and artificially blushed. "Goo-_oo_-od morning, sleepy head!"

I groaned, rolled tighter into the sheets and covered my face. The sight of her was offending. It was not a good morning. Not at all. Not when you were kidnapped in the middle of the night, administered drugs against your will, and woke to remember you would once more have to suffer through another go at group therapy. _He just hates me, so much, _I thought, and that sent a thrill of renewed fear through me.I would have to be alert. I had to be alert, always. What was I doing? He could come at any time. I sat up so fast, another sound of complaint ripped its way out of my mouth before I could halt it.

"Are you not feeling well?" Octavia asked. She was laying out my clothes. She glanced up to see my scowl. "I could request you a visit with the floor's doctor. I'm sure he could get you something to make you feel better."

"_No_," I spoke, quickly, soft; my voice sounding strangled and rasped. No more medicines. _No more doctors. _"No," I said, clearer, but no less quiet, and was relieved to see Octavia nod her head calmly. I think it was the fact that I actually spoke that made her relent so easily.

"Very well," she said. "Get dressed and then we'll join the others. Perhaps you just need a bit of breakfast. Nothing like a nice fresh glass of orange juice to clear one's mind!"

My caretaker left me to let me dress in private. I had trouble with the bra and then, in a slight fit of panic, I noticed the coverings on my camera were removed, and I clamored into the closet, half-dressed. On the way I knocked over the bedside table, tripped and fell flat on my backside, and cried out sharply when my elbow _snapped_ against the closet's back wall. Octavia returned to find me curled up in my place, one arm in a shirt-hole and my pants around my knees. She said nothing. She came forward and aided me without complaint or scold, and then smiled, patted a cheek, and guided me easily into the hall. It was the first time I felt grateful to have a caretaker.

I walked heavily; my muscles still seemed sore. The headache remained, so I clutched at the base of my skull, rubbing my braid between my fingers, while really rubbing the pressured pain away. Since someone might have noticed the way I winced and guessed at my weakness, and have taken advantage of that, I feigned interest in my hair in that way. No one was the wiser.

As I expected, near everyone was already out in the circle of chairs, waiting. Octavia bustled forward to get me a chair and placed it between Rue and, to my displeasure, Peeta. I plopped down, glowering. I pulled my feet onto the chair and hugged my knees to my chin. I looked at no one, did not trust myself to look, and did not want to see _knowing_ in their eyes. _Had they heard the tap, tap, tapping of two footsteps late last night, had counted, had noticed how they stopped right at my door… do they know that I am bewildered and disoriented..?_

"Good morning, everyone," Effie greeted us. There was a slight ripple of a reply. "I think we all know the drill, so I'll share first, and then Darius, then we'll go in a circle. Agreed?"

Clove made a snort-cough that sounded more like a groan, and rolled her eyes dramatically. No one heard what she said, but it made Glimmer upset to see the bitch-Clove side of the girl's personality disorder getting more attention than her. "Can I share after Darius, _first_?" Glimmer demanded.

"Now Glimmer," Darius said.

Effie waved him off. "To prevent any problems of order, let's pull sticks. Like old times!"

Cato crossed his arms over his chest. "Like kindergarten. You calling us stupid kids?"

"Of course not, Cato. I wouldn't dream of it. Unthinkable." Effie smiled her brightest winning smile to the ruthless boy, and then shared it with everyone else. "I would like to tell you guys about my husband."

"You have a husband?" Rue piped in. "You've never said so before. I mean, I remember your puppy, and your house in Florida, and you said once that you had a sister. She has two kids, doesn't she?" Rue rolled forward slightly while she listed all that she remembered, her feet tapping the ground, sliding onto the toes, as though ready to take flight – but that was fleeting, before she rocked back into the wooden chair, gripping the sides of it in tiny fists. "Nissa was her name. Not the dog, your sister. The dog's name was Seaweed. Because he loved the beach... when you lived in Florida… right?"

I blinked at Rue, while the girl from room Seven muttered, "And that is why I _never_ share."

"That's perfectly right, Rue. It heartens me to know you actually hear me when I speak." Effie touched her chest as though to actually bring the matter of her physical heart into presence. "But I didn't think I was ready to speak about my husband until now. I think I am, with you all."

Emotion was in her voice and face. She looked about and I saw one or two of the patients leaning forward, showing their devote attention. Others rolled their eyes or stared blankly in the distance or, like myself, watched the situation guardedly. Emotion was bad, very bad. It meant a possible snap. Snapping, though easy to give into in moments of fear and panic, usually meant bad… because snapping meant punishment… and punishment... had never meant anything to me before. It _had_ meant being kicked out. It _had_ meant another court session, another chance to see the Hawthorne family, to hear Hazelle scold me on my trouble-making, to hear Gale joke with me, even though he looked concerned when he thought I wasn't looking. Here, punishment was redefined.

Here, I shifted in my chair uncomfortably and caught Peeta's stare. There was only the briefest show of his eyes beneath his hood, before he averted his face completely from my direction. The emotion there showed somehow desperate – or had I imagined that? I would like to know that answer, but couldn't due to the boy's infuriating habit of hiding every trace of his body underneath mountains of clothing.

_"Was that really so hard?" _he'd asked.

For a moment I get caught up in that. Perhaps, somehow, ridiculously, he had said that, to shove me into the position of speaking _more_? To call off the axe Warden Coin had lifted over my head, and called it _curing me._ But there was more wrong with me than not speaking. I wasn't safe. He was out there ready to kill me, as he did mommy and daddy. He was out there; that was the main problem.

I could not allow myself to be steered off course. Warden Coin was a minor annoyance, a problem that dimmed in the bright harsh light of _him_. I wouldn't fear Coin as the other patients did, I resolved, even if I held onto a rage at her for doing all that she'd done to me last night, spoken to me the way she had, put whatever it was within my blood, potentially weakened me, and offered _him_ a chance to snatch me in my moment of weakness. Which made me suddenly suspicious; _did Warden Coin work for him?_

That was a nasty question to answer coupled with my headache and group therapy.

Effie ended in tears by the time she finished telling us the horror of her cheating soon-to-be ex-husband. Clove had flipped a page in the book, moving to pat the woman's back and offer fluttering eyelashes and empty words. Darius uncomfortably informed us all that he hates violent video games because of a shivery thing that happened to him when he was a kid. (He fingered a scar on the side of his neck as he spoke and I stared so intently at that, that the man could not hold my gaze.)

Pulling sticks, Effie got Rue, who talked of her family's orchard. I'd never seen an orchard before, since there were none in the places I visited as a child; a small community lost in the northern region of Alaska. Through that I came to the realization that near no one in the room with me actually came from Alaska. Not like I had. Rue came from Texas, Clove from New York, and Cato from Maryland. Then Peeta was pulled and he started talking about his family's bakery, somewhere in California. His hands moved animatedly as he reenacted the process of baking bread, _"just how my father taught me," _and he looked at no one. Ended speaking, stuttered, staring at the burn marks on his hands.

"What about your brother?" the boy from Three spoke up. He tugged at his greasy hair and twisted it anxiously around his fingers, over and over again, eyes round. "Rye, you called him. Yesterday."

"Dead," Peeta said, gruffly.

"We know that, cupcake," Cato said. "He means, did Rye bake or something like you did?"

"We all baked," Peeta said.

"Can you still bake?" Rue asked.

At that Peeta seemed to hunch further into his shoulders and tucked his face closer to his chest and hood. He started to rock. Portia, standing with the other caretakers, rushed forward and aided him to stand. Thresh shadowed them out of the room and Effie waved at the bread boy's back. "Thank you for sharing, Peeta, darling!"

I hugged my legs closer to my chest, until breathing was tight, until I knew I would not rock myself. I thought of bread, and baking, and fire. _Burnt_, came unbidden. Poor burnt Peeta. Pity broken Rue. Shattered dimensional Clove. Raging unstable Cato. Needy grasping Glimmer. I started to rock without really knowing it, imitating, lost in thought. I caught myself twice, before I shoved my legs harshly to the floor and sat rod straight. Still, I named the people around me. Nice, even labels with two words then a name. Poor burnt Peeta. Pity broken Rue. Playful strange Primrose. Clicking happy Effie. Drunken rude Haymitch. Shattered dimensional Clove. Autistic irregular Marvel. Traumatized mute Katniss.

"Katniss," Effie read from the stick in front of her face. They turned to me, a wave of attention. I shrunk in the shoulders. I thought of him. I thought of the weight packed around me in the dream.

Aly saved me. "I could go for her, if she doesn't want to." There was shyness in her, a demure _thrum_ in her voice. After Peeta had left, I noticed Aly clawing at a necklace around her neck, as though an anchor. "I could go, I could go, I could go," she repeated, whisper quiet. _Did she always do that? How had I not noticed before?_

"Of course," Effie allowed. "What will you share?"

"A story," Aly said. _A story, a story, a story, _she repeated herself, under her breath.

"About what?" Rue asked enthusiastically.

Aly's eyes darted Rue's way. The fingers on her necklace tightened around the pennant, knuckles white, and her eyes closed. "A knife. A pretty knife, with jewels in the handle and a long silvery blade." _A knife, a knife, a knife._

Apprehension colored the faces of the staff, while Clove leaned eagerly forward. "Was it yours?"

"No."

"Did you steal it?" the boy from Four wanted to know. Kleptomaniac clumsy Sal.

"Only for a moment," Aly said. "Only for a moment, for a special thing."

"What special thing?" Darius wanted to know.

Aly looked to him, measured him up, and narrowed her eyes. "They found her in the park." _In the park, in the park, in the park. _"Parks are good; playgrounds, swings, kids. But it was dark, and everything is awful when it's dark." The way she twisted the necklace tight around her own throat made me nervous. It bit into the thin pale skin, left marks like teeth, would break if she persisted. "She screamed, and cried, and that's where they found her… beside the lake, where he left her."

Effie folded her hands carefully against her knee and stared Aly very evenly in the eyes. "Who is her?"

That was when I realized _her _meant Aly. "Scared... she is scared," Aly told Effie.

"There's no reason to be scared, here, in these walls," Darius said.

"Parks, though," Aly said. "There was park and the knife. He held it to her, right here." Her knuckles skimmed the apple of her throat, her eyes closed. "She struggled, but he ripped up her pretty dress."

Uncomfortable: that was what I felt. I covered my ears and Rue imitated me. Others were watching Aly, eagerly. Interested were the boys from Eight and Six, the girl from Four, Cato. Clove was twisted up around her own body, recoiling from the words, but had eyes full of fever. "Tell us what happened, next," said Glimmer, ever crude. "Did he rape you?"

"Her," Aly snarled. "_Her_." _You don't understand – her!_

"Not you?" Cato asked. There was amusement in his face; I screwed my palms closer to my ears.

"Her. Her. _Her_."

Cato pushed though, "It was you. Don't pretend. Are you ashamed? Did he make you–"

"_Cato_." Effie's voice was the crack of a whip. Everyone jumped and recoiled; Cato straightened. "Enough."

Too late. Aly had tears streaming down her face and she started chewing on the end of her honey-colored pony tail, palming anxiously the sides of her hips. Rocking, Thresh pulled her into his arms and carried her out. A caretaker trailed after them.

I considered how fast it took for two of ours to be removed today compared to the amount Level Two lost in less than half an hour. If we lose three more we'd be beating them. Just as the thought occurred, Effie turned to me. She expected me to share, but I was still staring after Aly, clutching my ears. I opened my mouth, maybe to grunt. But a _whoop_ ran through my gut and strangled my throat. Next thing I knew, I was retching at the floor. And all I could think about was the row of syringes, the medicine bottle in Prim's hand, and _an unwanted treatment_.


	5. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

I wake somewhere new. I didn't open my eyes to confirm this, I just knew that I couldn't possibly be in the common room, nor was I in my room. A cool air wafted over my face, the low rattling of a fan evident nearby. Beyond that the room was noticeably hot, and strange, compared to the severely air continued halls of the first floor.

Around the vast space beyond the cot I laid on someone moved about, opening drawers, bumping them closed with a hip, writing on paper, clicking a pen. They mumbled a few things to themself and the voice was too deep to be female. Fear gripped me by the chest, hooked in as claws. _Has he found me already?_ _So soon?_ A chair's legs screeched eerily across the floor being toward me... heavy footsteps tumbling forward. I drew in tight panicked breaths the closer he got, waiting... waiting for him to reach me, to stop, to… the sound went straight passed me, and settled somewhere to my left.

Voices rose out of the silence. "How are you feeling today, Mr. Odair?"

A pained groan came in response. "Just absolutely perfect."

"You don't look too well." Velcro straps were ripped apart, the sound as loud as bones breaking. I flinched without meaning to, and prayed the two men didn't notice.

"Impossible," said Mr. Odair, voice amused. "I've never looked better."

"Must be those cheap polished plastic mirrors they give you." A hissing of air being pumped by a fist snakes through the man's words. "Deep breaths now, Mr. Odair." Slow wet breathing transformed quickly into coughing. Velcro, again, ripped apart, being removed. "Your blood pressure doesn't look too good."

Mr. Odair seemed to be trying to reply to that claim, but the coughing picked up and through the fit his words become barely distinguishable. But I'm certain I heard at least a fraction of what he'd said – "Misread."

"Sorry, Finnick," the doctor replied, on first name basis. A shudder ran through me. I'd learned through my years of hospitals that they only use your first name when they've got bad news. "You're stuck with me for the week. Not getting out of this one."

"But –!"

"No buts. I'll go talk to your caretaker about clothes. Do you want some books or a puzzle?"

"I want my photograph, the one by my bed. I need it. I won't sleep without it."

"Of course." There was the sound of the chair being replaced, of curtains being shut, and then heavy footsteps across a rather far distance. I counted the steps it took the doctor to reach the end of the room; fifty-two. A buzz reverberated through the air before the door opened, controlled by a key card, no doubt. My thoughts of slipping away while the doctor was out were dashed.

Part of me was urged to sit up and to look around, knowing at any moment the doctor could return. The other half stayed utterly still, afraid to move, to acknowledge the fact that I had awoken, and afraid of the other patient detecting me. The doctor hadn't been Warden Coin, evidently, and I didn't know anyone named Finnick Odair before, but who did I know? It was entirely conceivable that Finnick was a patient from Level Two, and that the doctor was a _real_ doctor. Not _him_. Not working for _him_. Not a part of Coin's experimentation that she called curing me.

_ Failed curing_, I corrected, a moment later. Whatever she'd tried on me has failed. My stomach is still in jumbles, an acidic burning resonating low inside. A vise of pressure pushed down on my sinuses, a blare of pain whenever I breathed. _What had she put in me? Has Prim come by to do her checkup and documented the effects already? _I hoped she had, so that they'd never try a dosage of that every again.

As I was contemplating getting up, I heard the sound of bed-springs creaking, to the left, and two feet thumping onto the floor, clumsy. Ridiculously, my heart kick-started. _Him, him, him; _a mantra in my head, pounding like the beat of a drum. I twisted in the plastic sheet, hands gripping my shirt, tempted to shove the fabric into my mouth to muffle the scream building in the back of my throat.

_ Shhh-rr; _the medical curtain made for modesty was ripped aside. "Hey, what are you in for?" Tensed, I didn't answer the sound of Finnick's voice, nearer, right beside me. I screwed my eyes shut tighter, willed away the stranger. "Hey, are you deaf?"

Hands reached for me, I felt them, their heat. I jerked back, threw myself up and Finnick held up his appendages in surrender. "Whoa, chill." Green-blue eyes wandered over my face, and then dipped lower to the hands I had thrown out, nails long and sharp. They grew cautious and uncertain, but were beguilingly beautiful. _Finnick_ was beautiful – suddenly, his discussion with the doctor was flooded with understanding; with the joke I hadn't understood.

We stared at each other, measured each other up. Then, slowly, Finnick's lips tilted upward. His voice became a seductive purr, "You must be new." Without invitation he slipped onto my cot beside me. I felt my insides twist together, like a spring, tightened, winded like a child's toy, about to burst. _Out, _I wanted to say, and choked on the word.

"I'm Finnick Odair." He waggled his eyebrows in greeting and smiled wider, revealing rows of flawlessly white teeth. "But you probably already know that, I'm pretty famous. Who wouldn't recognize _this_ physique?" A finger traced down the side of his face, caught his chin and turned it to give me a profile view.

I raised my eyebrows, inching away. Finnick laughed.

"Don't worry; you're not the first to be intimidated by me." He patted the space I'd managed to wedge between our bodies and then lay out on his side, a leg kicked up, grin leering. "I don't bite, I swear. Talk to me." Bronze hair tangled over his forehead like an untrimmed jungle of vines. Something about that made him look unstable, the ruffled state of him, something that made him look like he belonged _there_; on a hospital cot.

I turned my back to him, a foot touching the tile. "Tell me your name, at least," he cooed. I stepped away, reaching for the ugly flowered medical curtain still closed on my side of the bed. "Do you always play hard to get?" He sat up again, a plead edged in his voice. "Don't go."

Too late. I slipped out of the cool circle within a curtain – that held a strange and beautiful creature in my bed – and stumbled onto the other side. I was greeted by a long hall of beds, all empty besides mine and the one left to mine, Finnick's. The hall possessed no windows, the walls were solid slabs of blue-painted concrete, and the door at the end of the hall was made of reinforced metal; a hospital ward prison. Opposite to the door was a cluttered desk area, and behind that a supply closet. I considered hiding there.

Finnick popped out behind me before I did. "Horrible place isn't it? I hate staying here." A pause, as he looked about, frowning. Then he rubbed worriedly at his jaw. "My fans will miss me."

_Fans? _I cocked my head, and he perked up at the tiniest sign I was listening.

"My fans," he repeated, as if it were obvious. "Most of them are in hotel rooms around mine, on floor two. Which floor are you on? You're probably on one. They like to put the kiddies on the lobby floor, and that seems appropriate." A mischievous smile breaks on his face. "Wouldn't want any young girls sneaking into the of aged star's bed would we?"

_He's crazy, _I thought, fleetingly, without meaning to. Ironic, because everyone in the building was legally considered crazy. Mostly. I laughed out loud. A short little burst, right in his face. Instead of being offended the man laughed with me, nodding, grinning. He liked being the one who got the jokes. He thinks he's famous, a star. He thinks he's in a hotel, and that this is a normal place. A place where he's staying… _what_ on his way to his next modeling shoot, his debut concert, or perhaps a hosting job on a gameshow?

_He's crazy. He's delusional. _It was endearing somehow. Like the dimples in his cheeks.

"Are you the mute I heard about, then?" Finnick said next, breaking off the laughter. I fell still, watching him with a sharp spear of suspicion blooming in my chest. He realized his mistake in a heartbeat – I didn't know how, only that his face shifted a bit and his voice deepened. "Rue told me. She's got a mouth on her. My number one fan."

Rue. That calmed me. She talked, I knew that much. She wasn't _his_ type. I nodded, stiffly.

"Katniss, then." Finnick held out a hand, we shook. "It's nice to meet you. Tell you what, I'll smuggle you an autograph one of these days. Make you bank on eBay. Trust me." A wink–

"What are you two doing out of your beds?"

I jerked away from Finnick at the sound of the exclamation. He remained, stood calmly where he was, completely unperturbed. "You left me in a room alone with a girl and you expected her to stay where she was?" Finnick laughed, and it sounded more like a stereotypical "HAHA!" than I'd ever heard in my life.

The doctor, strutting down the hall our way, rolled his eyes. "Get to your bed, Mr. Odair." It was not unkindly said, and there was something very kindly about the man overall. He was all jowls, belly, and round, warm smile. Thick eyebrows drew over squinty little blue eyes as he examined me. "You too, Miss Everdeen. I heard you had a rough morning and it'll be best you stay the night to be observed."

I didn't object. _He_ couldn't touch this doctor even if he wanted to. He was too good. Only that left something else to be said; if he didn't work _for_ _him_, than he was in danger _of_ _him_. If I feared for myself against _him_, then I too feared for others who didn't even understand that _he_ was a threat. I crept back to my cot and left the curtain wide open. There was no reason to hide (though my eyes had strayed multiple times to the supply closet during Finnick's antics) and more than one reason to keep an eye on the two men in the hospital ward with me.

"Did you bring it, Doc?" Finnick asked as he settled in his own tangle of blankets. He sounded and looked like an eager child on Christmas morning. "Can I have it?"

"As promised," said the doctor. A small framed photo passed between them. I leaned over to glimpse what it was of, but Finnick tucked it under his pillow without pause. Rushed, he immediately lay down and clutched the pillow to a cheek, eyes closed, _content_.

The doctor closed the curtain around him, and came to me next, a stethoscope in hand. "Do you mind if I check your ticker?" I shrugged. "Wonderful. You've got color your cheeks again. I'm glad to see you feeling better. Do you have any pain?" The question is a venture, as though testing if a cliff-side is solid, if it will give underneath him. It stands too strong to crumble. "You can point to the places that hurt," he provided a moment later, staring down at me from his stool.

I drag two fingers down the sides of my nose then tap under my ears.

"Ah, very well," he said. "Would you like something for that?" _Pills, does he mean? _I shook my head. "Hold still then, dear." He placed the freezing metal circle against my chest, waited, nodded, and then moved it to my back. I shivered even with the room so warm. "Perfect," he said, removing the earpieces. He took one of my wrists in hand, looked at the shining gold-rimmed watch on his wrist and counted. "Well everything sounds good to me. You just get some rest and I'll see how you're doing in the morning."

_In the morning?_ Wasn't it just morning? On the wall over the door a clock read nearer nine at night than nine in the morning when I'd been in the group therapy session listening to Aly's wretched tale. My gut fell through my feet. All that time unconscious and susceptible to _him_. My skin crawled at the idea of him being around me, touching me, breathing on me, without me knowing. To hide the rush of blood leaving my face I hugged my torso and sank into the plastic sheet, rolling away from the direction the doctor's desk.

Minutes passed slowly. After a while Finnick started murmuring in his sleep, unintelligible things. I caught scarcely a word, only _superfan, encore _and _Annie _which had been repeated more than once. For a moment I allowed myself to wonder at this man. _Had he ever been famous before? Was there some small sibling he had once that looked up to him just that bit too much and one too many knocks on the head drove the fantasy wild? Is there somewhere deep, deep down inside this man that knows the truth? An anguished small voice in his heart that whispers to him that he is not celebrated, but a rather plain, wild-looking man locked up in a mental asylum?_

Thought I was told to rest, and sleep was tugging at me like an insistent child, I resisted. I rolled back without really knowing to watch the doctor as he went about his business. He rarely looked his patient's way. He went on for quite a long time scribbling in one of his notebooks humming a tune. More than once I caught his eyes straying to a framed photo perched on his desk. At one point he stared plainly at it for a whole minute, and then his eyes danced my way and froze at the sight of me. He smiled, turned on his chair and clicked around for a moment with a pile of disks. He placed a certain one in the laptop beside him, and a soft melody poured out of speakers hidden from above.

The music was a rising, tittering thing. Frail to begin with, I mistook a sense of peace from what he played and closed my eyes, and all too abruptly the notes crashed clumsily together and surged forward in a way that made me think of toddler thrashing at the surface of a deep lake and the ocean waves rising to drown entire cities. I liked it.

I must have fallen asleep, because next thing I knew I was jolted awake at the loud exclamation of "Father!" I scrambled to orient myself, and Finnick, behind the curtain, gasped into consciousness.

Flustered himself, the doctor got to his feet. "What is it, Magpie? I have patients sleeping in here. Don't you think you should be a bit more respectful?"

A girl pops around the frame of what I thought was a supply closet; yellow-haired, with a heart-shaped face, and eyes like two sapphire moons. She seemed almost doll-like. "I'm sorry," she said to her father, and then her gaze skated around the room, barely noting anything. "I'm sorry for waking you." 'Magpie' slipped into the hall toward the desk, a dress of white fluttering around her knees. "I can't find the spare batteries," she murmured softly, an attempt to be courteous. "It's –" Her soft voice cut off suddenly, and a spark of red blazed angrily in her cheeks. "Are you playing my tape?"

The doctor, her father, flushed too. He tapped a key on his computer. "Just for a moment."

"Dad!" she groaned. "With patients here?" The initial spark of her blush had been chagrin, but it transformed to real embarrassment when she saw me watching their interaction. "You promised."

"It completely slipped my mind. They were asleep and you know how your music calms." I blinked at the lie; he had known I was wide awake at the time he'd put the disk into the laptop.

'Magpie' scuffed a foot on the tile, and seemed to know it was a lie. "Well, it doesn't matter now. Do you know where the batteries are? I need extras for my flashlight. Delly's coming to take me camping in a week, I want to be packed."

"Of course. I must have left them in the drawer beside the stove." Together the two disappear through the door. Had I imagined it? Magpie, for just the barest moment, paused, lingered, turned her head and found my stare. She smiled a flashy, full-faced, and red lips kind of smile. Then like the bird she was titled as, she flitted from sight as if flushed from a bush by hunters, a whisk of white smoke.

"Madge is cute, isn't she?" I jumped at the sound of Finnick's voice. He slipped from his bed to mine, for the second time, though his hair was exceedingly more tussled that time, from sleep, and his eyes bleary. I didn't bother shrinking away or fleeing. Clearly he'd never learned to build, let alone recognize, boundaries. "Doctor Undersee really knows how to cook them."

I shrugged.

"Personally, she's not my type." Stretching out, he threw his arms behind his head and stared up at the ceiling, making himself at home. When I didn't reply or ask why, he bumped his hip playfully against mine, I flinched. He smiled, just barely. "She's too _normal_."

He said the word as if it were a bad thing.

In no time Doctor Undersee reentered the room, and as if expecting it, spotted Finnick instantly. "Get back in your own bed, Mr. Odair. I won't tell you a third time!"

"You know, jealousy doesn't look good on you, Doc." Nonetheless the bed was mine own again.

Eventually I fell asleep again, not to be interrupted. I was fully rested by the time I heard the buzz of the door being opened and footsteps parading about the room. Someone neared me, and I pushed myself up on an elbow, rubbing my eyes, blinking. Cinna materialized in sight.

"Good morning, Katniss." He placed a plate of toast beside my cot, butter slathered and cinnamon pinched. The smell sent pangs of hunger through me and I scarfed the food down without invitation. "I see Undersee's been starving you. Probably wanted to make you beg for something and make you use that voice of yours," Cinna said.

Undersee gave a short gruff laugh and indignant huff from across the room. "Very funny."

Neither made something of the joke, sharing their smiles while the bread turned to ash in my mouth. _Very funny, _the doctor said. But it was a valid method to some doctors in my history. I'd been starved before, dehydrated, put in a pen with an invitation out if only I _asked_ for them to free me. Their goal had been to make my want so vast that protective instinct in my mind would override the scar tissue of trauma that interferes with my speaking or any other mental jams and force the words from my mouth.

"How are you feeling?" Cinna asked. I looked away from his eyes, hoping he would not detect the memories running through my head; of ribs sticking painfully out, of a spine so exposed it hurt to lay on my back, of gripping the roots of my hair in supreme effort and struggling to form words, licking dry and cracked lips, grunting, trying to shape the tightening of my throat into syllables I didn't know that sat languishing on the tip of my parched tongue. There were only so many things I knew before I was five, and so many things they expected to draw out of a ten year old who had not talked in half a decade.

But then again, I'm not using the correct terms. I think 'them' and 'they', but I know it's been _him_ the entire time. They worked for him, were controlled by him. It wouldn't be fair to blame anyone else.

To Cinna's question I managed a slim smile. I gestured to the door. I was ready to go back. Even though the hospital ward was warm and Doctor Undersee kind… and Finnick not completely terrible company, I would feel better when I knew I was near my closet again.

"This way then, Katniss." Cinna stood and did a mock bow, before helping me to my feet. It was the first time he said my first name to me and I liked the way he shaped it in the staff's unusual accents. I didn't flinch away from his cool, gentle touch. "I'll be your new caretaker on this fine new week. I hope you don't object."

_Not in the least. _The fact that I willingly went away with him was sign enough. As we waited for Doctor Undersee to slip his key card through the door, I turned for one last look at Finnick. He sat on his cot, legs crisscrossed, and he was hunched over his legs, and over the framed photograph that he cradled in his hands. On my tiptoes I could just make out the image in fractured hazes. I got the impression of blue and green, of height, of sunlight, and a stretch of gold, until it came down to one focus point: a sandy beach, looking down on the ocean from a lighthouse, endless sky.

Finnick began to rock, murmuring, and he pressed his hands into the frame fervently, as if praying, or as if hoping for the picture to shape and wing, and to become real.

_Not normal. _The words echoed in my mind; _not normal, not normal, not normal._

_No. We're not, _I thought. _And I don't mind that._


End file.
